The Profiteers eBook

“The others must have found it, then,”
she observed. “My husband is almost without
means.”

“Phipps has supporters,” Wingate said
thoughtfully. “They’ll carry on this
combine until the last moment, until a Government commission,
or something of the sort, looks like intervening.
Then they’ll probably let a dozen of their subsidiary
companies go smash, and Peter Phipps, Skinflint Martin
and Rees will be multimillionaires. Incidentally,
the whole of their enormous profits will have come
from the working classes.”

“However visionary it is, I want to know about
your scheme,” she persisted.

“I cannot make up my mind to bring you into
it,” he declared doubtfully. “It
is practically a one-man show, and it is—­well,
a little primitive.”

“Do you think I mind that?” she asked
eagerly. “The only point worth considering
is, could I help? You know in your heart that
you could not make me afraid.”

“I shall take you into my confidence, at any
rate,” he promised, “and you shall decide
afterwards. I warn you, you will think that I
have drunk deep of the Bowery melodrama.”

“I shall mind nothing,” she laughed as
she assured him. “When do we begin?”

Wingate was thoughtful for a moment or two. They
both heard the opening of a heavy door down below,
the hailing of a taxi by the butler, and Dredlinton’s
voice in the street.

“Is that your husband going?” he enquired.

She nodded.

“Then I am going to make a most singular request,”
he said. “I am going to ask you whether
you would show me over the portion of the house which
you used as a hospital.”

CHAPTER VIII

Wingate returned to his rooms at the Milan about eleven
o’clock that evening, to find Roger Kendrick,
Maurice White and the Honourable Jimmy Wilshaw stretched
out in his most comfortable chairs, drinking whiskies
and sodas and smoking cigarettes.

“Welcome!” he exclaimed, smiling upon
them from the threshold. “Are you all here?
Is there any one I forgot to invite?”

“I decline to apologise,” Kendrick said.
“The fact of it is, we’re here for your
good, Wingate. We are here to see that you do
not die of ennui and loneliness in this stony-hearted
city.”

“In other words,” Maurice White chimed
in, “we are here to take you to the great supper-party.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear about it,”
Wingate declared, giving his coat and hat to the valet
who had followed him in. “Why don’t
you fellows sit down and have a drink?”

“My dear fellow,” Kendrick sighed, “sarcasm
does not become you. We are all drinking—­your
whisky. Also, I believe, smoking your cigarettes.
Your servant—­admirable fellow, that—­absolutely
forced them upon us—­wouldn’t take
‘no.’ And indeed, why should we refuse?
We have come to offer you rivers of champagne, cigars
of abnormal length, and the lips of the fairest houris
in London. In other words, Sir Frederick Houstley,
steel magnate of Sheffield, is giving a supper party
to the world, and our instructions are to convey you
there by force or persuasion, drunk or sober, sleepy
or wide awake.”